Technological Field
This disclosure is related to the field of video coding and compression. In particular, it is related to scalable video coding (SVC), including SVC for Advanced Video Coding (AVC), as well as SVC for High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), which is also referred to as Scalable HEVC (SHVC).
Background
Scalable video coding enables the encoding of high-quality video data that contains one or more subset bitstreams that can each be decoded with a complexity and reconstruction quality similar to existing video encoding and compression techniques. The subset bitstreams may be recovered by dropping certain packets from the larger bitstream.
For example, the subset bitstream may represent a lower spatial resolution (e.g., a smaller screen size), a lower temporal resolution (e.g., a lower frame rate), or a lower signal quality (e.g., lower signal fidelity) as compared to the larger bitstream. The data and decoded samples of each of these lower quality aspects (or bitstreams) can be used to predict data or samples of higher qualities/bit rates in order to reduce the bit rate to code the higher qualities. Accordingly, resolution, bit rate, and fidelity may be scaled to reduce bit rates and improve forward compatibility, as described below.
In H.264/SVC, a sophisticated solution is used to achieve high coding efficiency of an interlaced video sequence. The adaptive frame/field coding method may be supported in both a base layer (BL) and an enhancement layer (EL), meaning the base layer and enhancement layer picture can be a progressive frame, interlaced frame, a top field picture or bottom field picture. Such a design is highly complicated and may present a complex solution for interlaced bitstreams. The design of scalable video coding may be simplified while taking the advantage of an interlaced base layer stream.